The invention relates to an apparatus for crating or uncrating groups of containers, comprising a rotation element mounted for rotation about a substantially horizontal axis and having mounted thereon at locations spaced from said axis of rotation, container pickup heads for repeatedly travelling through a closed loop path from a pickup position to a grip release position.
Apparatus of this type is preferably employed in the beverage industry for placing groups of bottles in carrying crates or for emptying such carrying crates. In this environment it is of importance that the bottles and crates are carefully handled, although the desirably high output of the packing operation requires high conveyance speeds resulting in strong acceleration and deceleration forces acting on the bottles. Of particular importance is the avoidance of bottle breakage which would otherwise result in frequent interruptions of the operation.
A container packing or crating apparatus of the type defined above is known from DE-PS 10 87 967. This apparatus comprises three pickup heads suspended on a rotation element in the manner of a gondola for travelling in a vertical plane, the pickup heads being suspended from rails or pivot arms laterally projecting from the rotation element so as to permit horizontal displacement of the pickup heads in addition to their travel in a vertical plane. A pickup position and a grip release position, respectively, are provided in the lowermost position of the pickup heads. For the purpose, for instance, of placing bottles in a carrying crate, a pickup head is moved to its lowermost position for engaging bottles supplied to this pickup position. In the course of a full revolution of the rotation element, the respective pickup head is horizontally displaced so as to position it above a conveyor path extending adjacent the bottle feeding path and along which a carrying crate to be filled is supplied. In order to permit the pickup head to pick up another group of bottles after having placed its bottles in the carrying crate, it has to perform a further full revolution of 360.degree., in the course of which it is returned in the horizontal direction for alignment above the bottle feeding conveyor. This known apparatus for crating containers thus suffers from the disadvantage that the crating speed is reduced by the requirement of a full revolution of the empty pickup head to enable it to pick up a subsequent group of bottles. Since both the pickup and release positions are located at the lowermost positions of the pickup heads, the apparatus requires the provision of two side-by-side conveying paths for the bottles and cases, respectively, resulting in excessive space requirements. In the known apparatus it is finally necessary, moreover, to very accurately synchronize the movement of the crates to be filled with the travelling speed of the pickup heads conveying the bottles, in order to permit the bottles to be accurately placed into respective compartments of the crates.
It is an object of the present invention to propose an apparatus of the type defined in the introduction, which offers considerable improvements over the known prior-art apparatus of this type.